The Daily Beast Podcast - George Conway Feels Bad for What Happened to Monica Lewinsky

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

But the lawyer doesn’t regret his role in the Clinton impeachment saga. Also on the latest New Abnormal, whether Texas spells the end of Roe, where Georgia is headed, and more. Later in the episode, Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock, author of The Afghanistan Papers, talks about American officials’ doublespeak on Afghanistan over 20 years. He also shares with Molly his take on how Michael Flynn went from respected, level-headed three-star general to QAnon crank. Finally, Georgia state Sen. Jen Jordan, who’s running for attorney general, talks about how gerrymandering is likely to produce more Marjorie Taylor Greenes, whether how Texas’ abortion ban will inspire Republicans to replicate it in Georgia. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes it's just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kenan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have an excellent show. First, we'll talk to Craig Whitlock, the author of the Afghanistan papers, to get more perspective on what's going on there. Then we'll talk to Jen Jordan, who's running for Attorney General in Georgia about what's happening there with redistricting and abortion laws. But first, we have Washington Post columnist, real-life character from American crime story impeachment and friend of the show, George Conway. Welcome back to the new abnormal, George Conway. Hi. Hi. How are you? Okay. The escape the floods. Well, I mean, our house up in New Jersey, we're fine, but there's just flooding all around.

I saw some videos on a shop right near my house or miles away from my house, and people were swimming in the aisles to get to there. My friend Lior's mother got rescued from her house in a boat. Where was this? What town? New Jersey. So let's talk about the many shining stars. of the GOP Republican caucus, starting with a young whippersnapper named Madison Cawthorn. Oh, God, help us. It strikes me that young Madison promised another armed insurrection the other day. Discuss.

It certainly sounded that way. I mean, I don't even know what to say about it. It's just these people are completely nuts. But what happens? I mean, they're going to do it again. Oh, somebody's going to do it again. They're going to say, oh, I didn't mean it that one. way I was just, you know, I was just using the word fight the way the Democrats say, you know, fight for women's rights. You know, they're going to engage in that same kind of denial discourse when in fact that, you know, he was actually talking about violent revolution there and then denying it. But that's the kind of rhetoric that they use these days. And it goes way beyond, let's let's keep up the fight, keep up the good fight. It's it's actually talking about if we don't get our way, let's engage in violence. And sooner or later, if you keep talking like that,

people are going to engage in violence. And we saw that on January 6th. And my fear is that we will see it again. Yeah, it strikes me that we're absolutely, I mean, if you have elected Republicans going down this road, I mean, what could you do? Let's just talk for a second in the theoreticals here. Say that Republican minority leader McCarthy wasn't a coward and a morgue. moron. What could he do theoretically? What could he do? He could, I mean, he could, this is a member of his caucus. He could say, like, you can't talk like this. He could punish him. He could, I mean, imagine if this were a Democrat. You think Nancy Pelosi would be like, yeah, wow. I mean, she, you know, she was all over Ilhan Omar, all over her. I don't know what he could possibly do at this

point because they've just given up of themselves in the sense that they don't believe in constraining themselves. They only believe in just letting people say whatever they want to excite the base. And they're going to pay a price for it. They are how? I think at some point, it's going to cost them among people who don't want violent revolution, even if they don't necessarily approve of everything that goes on. Do we feel like the private sector may be actually the people who may actually hold these people to account? I see that as the only hope personally. You know, I would hope so. On the other hand, we saw a lot of companies that claimed that they were going to stop making contributions to the various people who supported overturning the election. And then like Toyota, they started up again.

Because the fact, the matter is they, you know, their interests lie in keeping as many people happy as possible. Yeah. And if no one's looking, they're going to, you know, they'll throw money here, throw money there because they need, you know, their lobbyists are saying, well, you know, we may need their votes on something. brother. So George Conway, you're a lawyer. Allegedly. Right. Allegedly. And you know the law. Allegedly. Some law. Some law. So is it legal? I need your hot take on this for McCarthy to threaten companies with reprisals for following a congressional subpoena. Because that strikes me, again, I'm not a lawyer. But that strikes me as pretty fucking sketch, as we say. It's pretty sketchy. I don't know whether what he did there was necessarily a violation of any particular statute, but it is definitely sketchy. And I think it kind of shows a consciousness of what lawyers in the criminal realm call a consciousness of guilt. What's he afraid of? What exactly is he afraid of that is going to come out as the result of this investigation? And they just are terrified of it. It is interesting to me that he is willing to die on the hill of the sketchiest members of the Republican caucus.

I mean, Representative Gosar. I mean, it's literally a who's who of the worst. Yeah, it's incomprehensible to me. I can't say anything else. But you know what's interesting to me is these are red districts, right, that are electing some of the worst, worst members of Congress. theoretically, if Republicans were brave, they could run other people who were less terrible and still win. Well, I think the problem is you don't really have control over who runs. And if you run, too many people run, you end up with the more extreme person who can somehow cobble together, you know, a base within the base.

Well, and that's how we got Trump. Yeah, although there were a lot of other things going on with Trump. With Trump, there was this, yes, I mean, 17 people running didn't help. But also there were these screwy rules that said that, you know, after the first few primaries, it's winner take all, even if you only have a plurality of like 35 percent of the primary vote, you get all the delegates and that allowed Trump pretty much to run away with it fairly quickly. Even though I think, you know, a majority of Republicans in a lot of these states, if it had been a one-on-one race, might have gone, you know, against Trump. But, you know, but Kasich refused to get out when he should have. Right. It prevented a two-man race, which Cruz actually would have had a chance at. And, you know, they're not like Ted Cruz. Does anyone like Ted Cruz?

No, but not people don't, including people who probably should. You know, if he had, if it had a one-on-one race fairly early on, he had a chance to win, And, you know, you wouldn't have liked his presidency, Molly, but he would not have liked his presidency, but he was not, he was not insane in the way that Trump is. Now, you know, they've all become copycats because that's this way to get ahead in the Republican Party. So let's talk about the Supreme Court. You and I are good friends and we really are good friends. I know you're pro-life. No, you assume I'm pro-life. We've talked about this. I understand that, but you assume that I'm pro-life.

because I give, I mean, the pro-lifers would not consider me pro-life. Okay. Okay. I mean, for example, I mean, the pro-lifers would not consider me pro-life and the pro-choices would not consider me pro-choice. Talk to me about this decision because I'm up in arms and I think if you read the dissent, they're up in arms. Talk to me.

Again, I think more is being made of this decision than should be. I think there were problems with this particular case. There were even more problems with the statute, but the problem in this particular case... Right. The statute is insane, though. The statute is completely insane. The notion that you put private enforcement into play on a subject like abortion or, frankly, a lot of other subjects,

where you give bounties to people to enforce the law, is completely insane. It is absolutely insane. That creates the problem. I think it was intentional in the way they design the statute. It creates the problem in, yeah, how does a court grant relief here? Because who do you sue? Because if you sue the people who are normally would be enforcing the law, the problem is here is they're not enforcing the law because the statute provides that,

you know, the public health or the state or the attorney general has nothing to do with enforcing lawsuit. Suing them and issuing an injunction against them doesn't do any good. And one of the fundamental rules of courts and Article 3 of the Constitution and of equity jurisprudence is that in order to get an injunction, you have to, the injunction has to have some effect that here it would not have an effect. On the other hand, okay, so you sue everybody in the state who could possibly bring one of these lawsuits. Well, you can't do that because you don't know who they are yet. So, and then, you know, you could sue, you can't really sue the courts because the courts aren't doing anything until somebody actually brings one of these lawsuits. And so there's really nobody to

sue at this point. And if there's, you know, if you, if you, if you, if you, there's nobody to sue, you don't have a case or controversy. And that's what they did here. They did. They decided to create a situation where you, there was really, you know, they had this fake prohibition on abortion that isn't enforceable until somebody actually brings an action after. the fact. And the only reason why it has an effect is, is because of the other case. People are saying, oh, this is the end of Ro. This is not the problem. If you're pro-abortion or pro-Roe, this case isn't the one that's undoing Roe. It's the Mississippi case and the threat there of overruling Roe that causes the Texas case to have a chilling effect. And let me explain that. If there were no

question that Roe were going to survive the Mississippi case, then nobody would take the Texas law seriously because no way, there would be no way damages could be awarded because it would be unconstitutional. And everybody would know that and the people who are providing for abortions, which is blow through this statute and say it's meaningless. But the reason why it could have a chilling effect and there could be damages is, well, if the Supreme Court actually did overrule row, and I'm not just, I think, I'm far from convinced that that's going to be the case, although, yeah, there was a risk. If that happens, then actually then this law, this crazy group gold birdie in law would have an

effect because you could actually have some liability potential. So the people who are saying that this is, this is the thing that's, this is the problem case are wrong. And they do have a point in that, well, gosh, if you can do this, then you can go around and avoid injunctions in lots of different cases. And, well, that's true, but that's not the only way that constitutional rights are enforced. You know, the rights against searches and seizures are enforced by invoking them as a defense in a, you know, in a criminal case. First Amendment rights are often invoked not by bringing an injunction suing somebody in advance of something happened, which does happen, like in the Pentagon Papers case, but by applying them as a defense. in like a liable case. So, you know, just because you don't get immediate relief in the Supreme Court in this circumstance where nobody has actually tried to enforce the law doesn't mean that

the law would be enforceable if, you know, again, assuming Roe stands because the, you know, Roe v. Wade and Casey and that whole jurisprudence could be invoked as a defense to liability, which would be an absolute airtight defense if progeny were reaffirmed. Okay. I love you. That sounded like. stereo instructions, but I know you're right and very smart about the Constitution and the law, though I think ultimately it comes down to now. I mean, Jesse and I are absolutely... What I'm saying is it comes down to, it comes down to what happens in the Mississippi case. Right. But for today, if you're a woman in Texas, you cannot get an abortion after six weeks.

Yeah, I mean, that's true. I mean, that's true. If the providers are unwilling to run the risk, that the case could turn out the other way, you know, next year. I mean, yes. The way it could happen, though, you could have a, you could have a litigation posture where somebody actually does try to enforce the law. Right. In which case, at that point, you have somebody you can sue. This lawsuit is, as a technical matter, premature. Right. But so what you're saying, which I think is an important message to hear, is that abortion clinics in Texas should keep giving abortions to women before 24, weeks, and they should ignore this obviously unconstitutional law. No, I'm acknowledging, actually, I'm making the point that these clinics would make, which is they run the risk of liability if Roe is overruled in that other case in the Mississippi

case. But the reality is that Roe promises an expectation that women should have a reasonable, reasonable expectation of being able to end a pregnancy. You can't place an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion. And the problem is, of course, that that was not the original Roe framework. That was created in 1992 in Casey. And it's not, you know, it's sort of inscrutable by its own terms. But there's a whole, you know, there's a whole set of cases that define undue burden since that.

Right. Right. No, it's a good point. And we have this very nice friendship. And we are good friends. I want to say this because it's really true, even though I think you're wrong about a lot of stuff. But I do think you're very smart and know a lot of stuff, obviously, that I don't know. Let us talk about the show that I am obsessed with and have seen seven episodes of American Crime Story.

All right. Where I sent you a picture of a young and dashing George Conway. Discuss. I don't know. They found some guy who kind of looks like me. It looks like the way I did in the 1980s and 1990s before I got old. I can still grow the hair along. Let us talk about, do you regret your role in that?

No, I mean, you know, I think, I mean, you said that I came off all right in that show. Yes. And I think the real I came off right in that show is because now we're kind of after Me Too. In the 1990s, everybody said, oh, we love Bill Clinton. Oh, who cares what he did with the intern? That's his own private business. And we love him because he supports the right to choose and appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. Seriously.

Seriously. I mean, there's that famous line. No, that was. That was what people said. What was that? Who was it? She was funny as hell, where she basically said she'd gladly give, I forget who, she was a female writer.

She gladly give Clinton a something. Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember this too. For standing up for the right to choose. It is an important point. The I'm a good liberal defense does not work today. And, you know, and it shouldn't. It shouldn't work then.

I agree. I mean, I think about, you know, know, I actually just wrote a piece about this, the apology that we owe Monica. Yes. She was 21 years old, put in an internship with a powerful man with a history of sexual harassment and assault, and who had, you know, allegations against him and who was also just like a Casanova. And she is then put, you know, somehow this is all her fault. The media made it her fault.

She did tempt me. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, you know. Right. She's 21 years old. And I apologize for that. I mean, I did not deserve to get impeached. I mean, that was a little bit too far. Who would have known that George Conway and Rick Wilson could both do good Bill Clinton's? Everyone can do a good Bill Clinton.

I mean, you just do Southern. It's really not that hard. I can't do it. It was actually from watching Saturday Night Live when What's His Name used to go into McDonald's jogging room? Oh, yeah, yeah. Norm McDonald, I think it was. But I want to give you a hard time because we have one more minute. You enabled a real kind of, I mean, do you really feel okay?

I mean, look. About Monica? Yeah, I feel bad for what happened to Monica. Right. Okay, good. Right. But, you know, but on the other hand, what was going on there? Because you had a moment where you knew that Monica, you've said this to me, you knew this was going to be just awful for Monica.

Well, I didn't know that it was going to be awful for Monica. I thought it was going to be awful for Bill, but I did think, geez, I remember like just 24 to 48 hours before it was clearly going to hit the press. I remember thinking, gosh, whoever this Monica woman is, in 48 hours, billions of people are going to know who she is. And I kind of was contemplating that. I didn't, you know, I couldn't fully, it was impossible to fully foresee how, like, how the whole thing would play out. Yeah. And at that point, we didn't know, I mean, I didn't know anything. about Monica other than she, you know, existed and there were these tapes of her talking to

Linda Tripp. And I didn't know anything. She wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, now we know who she is. We know what she looks like. We know what she sounds like. It wasn't, you know, before that all surfaced, it was, you know, didn't really know who she was and what was going to happen to her. What her story was, frankly. Right. And you couldn't possibly know that the media would be so violently misogynistic towards her. No, I thought, I mean, frankly, I thought she was going to be portrayed as a victim of this guy. I, yeah, I mean, I could not believe the way people blamed her. Liberals.

Liberals, liberal feminists did that. I know, I know. And actually, I want to say something. My mother, a lot of feminists said horrible, horrible, horrible things. I don't even understand it. They slut shamed her. Yes, 21 years old. And there was the most amazing thing to me to watch all of these liberals do that because if this had been a woman doing that doing that with a Republican president,

oh, that woman would have been the victim in a heartbeat. Yeah. Well, I don't know because I think that some of this was 90s misogyny. George Conway, I'm so glad you came on. I appreciate you. And thank you. Thank you. Hey, folks, in case you didn't know, every week we do a special bonus episode for members of Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program.

This week, we have a special episode with Tom Nichols, who's a professor and author of the death of expertise as well as his new book, Our Own Worst Enemy. And we're going to talk to him all about what he sees going wrong in America. To hear this along with all of our past bonus episodes and gain access to all the Daily Beast fearless journalism, head to new abnormal. That's new abnormal.thedailybeast.com. Craig Whitlock is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post and the author of the Afghanistan Papers, A Secret History of the War. Welcome to the new abnormal Craig Whitlock. Thanks for having to be, Molly.

We're so excited to have you. Now let me tell you how I learned about you. It's such a good sort of podcasting story. One of my favorite guests is a man called GTR who writes for the nation. Jeet here says, you know, all these fucking neocons who are so obsessed with Afghanistan and withdrawal from it, there was the best reporting on Afghanistan and people did not seem to have seen it. And that was you. The Afghanistan paper. So let's talk about the Afghanistan papers. Sure, you bet. Talk to me about how you got here, how you got to the Afghanistan papers.

in the first place. Yeah. So, well, it feels like it was in a galaxy long long ago. It was...

2019. Actually, 2016, believe it or not. Oh, wow. This is while Obama was still president,

if you can believe it. I had gotten a tip that summer that General Michael Flynn, who we now know today to be... Total psychopath. Oh, yeah,

that guy. He was starting to become famous because he was campaigning for Trump, and he was, was shouting, lock her up, lock her up about Hillary at the Republican National Convention. But, you know, he had been a three-star general in the military and had actually overseen. No, I know.

He'd overseen military intelligence in Afghanistan. And I heard he gave this interview to kind of an obscure agency called the special inspector general for Afghanistan. And so, you know, Flynn was in the news and I'm a reporter. So I was interested to know what he said. Long story short, I put in a Freedom of Information Act request for the transcript of this interview he gave. The famous FOIA. Yeah, FOIA. And I thought I was going to get it right away. It dragged out.

The post ended up having to sue the Inspector General and federal court. We got Finn's transcript, and he had all this blistering criticism about the war. He said the government was lying about how things were going. Then I found out that the Inspector General had actually conducted 400. other interviews with people who were involved in the war, from diplomats, generals, aid workers, white house officials, you name it. I thought, wow, I really want to know what all these people said. And the inspector general dug in their heels. We had to sue again in federal court under FOIA. And after three years, we finally got about 2,000 pages of notes and

transcripts. And that's the core of the Afghanistan papers. All these people in these, what were confidential interviews, frankly confessing to all the mistakes they made. Wow. Craig, so I feel like the main feature of a lot of what you talk about in the early days of the stuff you found is kind of the two-facedness and that people now are kind of forgetting that. That Afghanistan was seen by Rumsfeld as going very badly, yet in public, they were going, you know, putting roses everywhere, declaring victory, everything. Could you talk to us about that?

Yeah, sure, of course. I mean, you know, people have short memories, and this was a 20-year war. People forget. Really short memory. The perceptions. And the distinction about this war is back in 2001, it was a very popular military operation. You know, Bush's approval ratings in the spring of 2002 were about 90%. This was seen as a war of self-defense.

And only one person voted against it, Barbara Lay. That's right. In Congress. Yeah. But, you know, people were scared that Al-Qaeda was going to carry out another attack. So there was great popular support to carry out military operations against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, because that's where bin Laden was based. Within six months, it looked like we had won the war very cleanly.

The Taliban had been removed from power, and al-Qaeda's leaders had been captured, killed, or had fled Afghanistan like bin Laden did. And so people thought we won the war. But then slowly over time in the ensuing months and years, the Taliban slowly started to come back. And Rumsfeld and the others were totally focused on Iraq, planning another war. And so when it became clear that things weren't going so great in Afghanistan anymore, there was an extreme reluctance on the part of the Bush administration to admit any of that. And what we see in the Afghanistan papers is despite their public pronouncements that the war was

going fine and we were making progress and this was all well and good, that in private, that Rumsfeld and others were really concerned that things were getting screwed up. And you see Rumsfeld memos time and again where he's complaining to his generals that they're going to get stuck there. There was one memo six months into the war where Rumsfeld tells his generals, you know, if we don't find a come up with a plan to stabilize Afghanistan, we're never going to get our troops out of there. And he made a memo with one word. It said, help, exclamation point. Jesus. And, you know, this was back in 2002.

And of course, the irony is he was right. He was worried about getting stuck and we did get stuck. Yeah. It strikes me that the Obama administration kept it going. That's right. Just as badly in terms of this contrast between what they were seeing in public and what they really thought in private. There was notes of one interview we obtained under FOIA in the Afghanistan papers with someone

who worked at the White House under Obama on the National Security Council. They blacked out the guy's name, but we know it was somebody who worked at the White House. And this person was very open about it. He said, you know, all the measurements, all the statistics we collected to measure the war's progress or lack thereof. Like, you know, how many schools we built or surveys of the population or stats on violence levels. He said the metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war. Right. He said, no matter what the statistics show, we always spun them to make it look like we were making progress, no matter the reality of it.

And he did this for two. reasons, one, to make the people in charge look good like Obama, and two, to maintain public support for this work. Because by the time Obama was present, there was, you know, support was really dwindling because the war dragged on so long. So this guy in the White House is just being very open, admitting that they twisted all the numbers to make everything look good, and that this was intentional and it went all the way up to the president. Why do you think that, why do you think Obama did that because it just strikes me as, I mean, I know he did keep it going. It strikes me as just sort of shocking. Well, it is shocking, but you have to remember, the best answer I can come

up with is, again, this was a war that originally had been popular in the United States, that it was seen as a just cause. And the American people thought they'd want it. And Obama, when he came in office, he campaigned on the idea that he could fix it. Right. People knew Bush had focused too much on Iraq and he had lost control of Afghanistan. But Obama said, I'm going to get our troops out of Iraq, but I'm going to fix the war in Afghanistan because that's the so-called good war, right? Right. Well, he couldn't.

And we were starting to lose that, too, under Obama's surge strategy. He sent 100,000 troops here. We spent bundles of money. What president wants to admit, they're losing a war that was originally seen as in the bag and a just cause. Nobody wants to admit this because then they're admitting. failure. And in war time, no president wants to admit failure. And so I think Obama, you know, he fell in the same category as Bush and Trump on, on nobody wanted to admit how badly things were going. I mean, we had Jason Candor on this podcast. He discussed a lot of the corruption in the Afghan

government, the Potemkin government that we set up. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So, I mean, this, again, this was a problem that was known all along that the Afghan government was corrupt, that our partners that we put into power, a lot of them were warlords, were commanders of the Northern Alliance that had been fighting the Taliban. But, you know, these weren't choir boys. These are the Mujahideem.

Exactly. These were people who have been fighting the Taliban. Some of them had been fighting the Russians back in the 80s. But, you know, these were not, a lot of these guys were accused war criminals, right? And they were thieves. And we put them in power. Always a dicey move.

Yeah, I mean, you can argue that there weren't many alternatives in Afghanistan. It was it was either the Taliban or these warlords. But the problem is we made things worse because particularly under Obama, we ended up spending so much money in Afghanistan, flooding the country with so many billions of dollars that it couldn't possibly absorb all that money. So it ended up in people's pockets and particularly the warlords and the people in government. There was one interview in the Afghanistan papers with an army colonel named Chris Kalenda.

And he was saying it was, you know, it was beyond redemption in Afghanistan, the level of corruption. He said by 2006, the Afghan government had turned into what he called a kleptocracy, which is sort of a fancy word for saying the only purpose the government had for existing was to steal money from the population. So he said the whole reason the government was there was so people could line their pockets. And he said that was in place by 2006. So we said after that, we only made things worse because we kept giving them more and more money and the corruption got worse and worse. Right. No, I mean, you clearly see that and the people we've interviewed have said that same thing. I want to go back to Michael Flynn because Michael Flynn had real jobs in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Did he, was he always crazy or did he have sort of Devin Nunes syndrome? You've now read a lot of interviews with him. What is your hot take? I know you're a straight news reporter, so I'm making you have lots of opinions, but I'm sorry, that's how it is here. Well, I covered the Pentagon from 2010 to 2016, and, you know, I covered Afghanistan a lot during that period. And when Flynn was in uniform and he worked for special operations forces, he was seen as a pretty

level-headed guy, a smart guy, a guy with a lot of influence. he was sort of a rock star in military circles, right? So what happened? Well, this is a big question. Nobody really seems to know. But certainly by the end of his time in uniform, he was essentially pushed out as the defense intelligence director by Obama in 2016, because there were concerns at that point that he was becoming radicalized.

And then once he retired, he clearly was very angry at how the Obama administration treated him. and he kind of became unhinged after a while. But what happened, I don't know. But now, of course, he's a big QAnon person and all that. But when he was in uniform, he was well respected. I mean, you don't get to be a three star in the army, you know, unless you have a lot of pull and you're well respected. And if you go back and you read the interview he did for the Afghanistan papers,

he's on the mark about a lot of things. He said, you know, year after year, we kept telling people how great the world. was going, but he said at his level in the field, when you look at all the reports coming in and you look at the facts on the ground, he said it felt like we were losing. Why are we telling people that we're winning when it's clear that we're not? So you look at that historically, that interview from 2016, you know, he sounds pretty level-headed. I think he was accurate at that point. Now, what happened to him after that when he got caught up with Trump, you know, I can't tell you, but you go back. His original perceptions were on the mark. Yeah, we were really

lied to. And I mean, I guess that that is historically what happens, but to be lied to for 20 years? Yeah, no, I agree. And I think this is the power of the book. You know, I would go back and I would match up, you know, general so-and-so would say we're making progress in public. And then you look at the documents to see what was being discussed at the time. And they knew it wasn't true. And you see this both on individual events, but also the broader message. It really started in the best early example was in May of 2003 during the Bush administration. Everybody remembers how Bush went on this aircraft carrier and announced mission accomplished in Iraq, right? Even though, of course, the Iraq war was just starting. Well, on that same day, a lot of people don't remember this, but Rumsfeld went to Kabul in

Afghanistan to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He said the same thing at a press conference. He said major combat operations in Afghanistan are over. You know, the country stabilized were at peace. This was a blatant lie that, you know, that just wasn't true at all. There were interviews we obtained for the Afghanistan papers with army officers at military headquarters in Kabul. And they said, when Rumsfeld said this, we couldn't believe it. We didn't know what he was talking about because we had never received any order to end combat operations. There was still combat going on.

And they named all these named missions, you know, Operation Mountain Lion, Operation This and That. And he said, they said, we were still fighting. So Rumsfeld was just making this up. But it wasn't just then. This would happen time after time under Obama and Trump, where they just say one thing in public that they know isn't true. But I think once they all got in deep on it, who's going to start telling the truth all

a sudden? Nobody wants to admit that things are going south. I'm presently looking at this graph media matters. made where they show that the articles written about Afghanistan were pretty low for the last 20 years. And now we're right about at the peak of where, when we first invaded. I feel like there's been a lot of context missing. And you're somebody who probably knows some context that should be interjected into this discussion. Is there anything you think that people have been really missing when discussing this? Well, I think there's been coverage of Afghanistan all along. I think, frankly,

it disappeared from TV. Yes. And, but, you know, a lot of news organizations had bureaus in Afghanistan the full 20 years. I mean, the Post and the Times and the Wall Street Journal. And a lot of these reporters on the ground put themselves at great personal risk to document what was going on. And they reported the problems with corruption and that the war wasn't going as well as the general said. Nobody was interested. It's difficult to break through, right? I mean, how do you prove that the people in power are lying or exaggerating?

You know, it's hard to say definitively they're making stuff up. And that was the great benefit of having these documents from the Afghanistan papers. It was like, in their own words, we could prove they were lying and making stuff up. But that's hard to do. I mean, it took me three years in federal court to get these things. And there aren't many news organizations that had the resources of the post where we'd hire these expensive lawyers. Right. Right.

the government to court twice. I mean, that's, that's unheard of. But I'm glad we persisted with it, because otherwise, you know, this story would have never been told. What do you think, again, I'm sorry, I'm asking for your opinion, about Biden's pullout? Well, look, I think it's pretty clear that the planning was poor, right? And when Biden was asked in July, are we going to have another Saigon moment, you know, could things really get bad in Afghanistan? and we have helicopters evacuating people off the roof of the embassy, like happened in Vietnam in 1975. And Biden was just completely dismissive of this. And no, no, no, that's ever going to happen.

It's not going to be like that. Now, the distinction is I don't think Biden was lying. I think he really thought that. It's just he screwed it up. Yeah. Right? They weren't prepared. And all of a sudden, the Taliban, you know, it just takes over all these provincial capitals and just waltzes into Kabul.

clearly they weren't expecting this, but they just got it wrong. And then they had to play catch-up trying to bring troops back in and evacuate all these Americans and Afghans with special visas. But ultimately, this was never going to look good. Well, that's right. And it's a lot easier to start a war than it is to end one. I know that's a cliche. No, but it's true.

But I think one thing, to be honest, I think the Biden administration sort of was, they were lulled into a little complacency. You know, Secretary Austin, the defense secretary, he had actually been the general in charge of Iraq. The Iraq were when we pulled out in 2011. I was actually there in Baghdad when that happened. Obama had promised to end that war and pulled troops out and he did in 2011, but they, you know, there was a ceremony in Baghdad and they had speeches and everything was very stable at the moment when we pulled U.S. troops out, that there was no evacuation. There weren't people rushing to climb on planes because the Iraqi government still had some stability. And so I kind of, my suspicion is that because these same people were in charge during the Biden

administration, they were kind of expecting the same kind of thing to happen in Afghanistan. And they just were caught unprepared when the Taliban came roaring through. It feels like they didn't understand the level of corruption in the Afghan government. I think what they didn't understand was the degree to which the Afghan army was going to throw down their arms, but they should have understood that because they received report after report. I mean, if you read the Afghanistan paper's books, you'll hear all these hair-raising stories from U.S. military trainers over 20 years who are training the Afghan army and the Afghan police, the paramilitary police, saying that, you know, these guys were, I mean, I'm painting with a broad brush, but the basic message is, You know, these guys couldn't shoot straight. They couldn't read.

They couldn't count. They were not loyal to their commanders because their commanders would steal from them. The Afghan commanders would rape them. I mean, it was a disaster. Right. I think it's also important to interject here, though, that tens of thousands of Afghans died fighting the Taliban. So while there was corruption in the higher levels and they weren't, you know, I think a lot of people died. they got to this place.

That's right. And they died. So I'm not minimizing people giving up their life, but it was a large reason why so many, there were so many casualties is because they were completely incompetent as a fighting force, right? I mean, the reason so many people died and there were so many casualties is the Taliban was running circles around them. And the question is, how could this be given that we gave more than $85 billion to train and equip the Afghan forces while the Taliban is this rag-tag bunch of gorillas and they're

kicking their butts. Well, a lot of it gets into the question of, you know, the Afghans were poorly led. They were corrupt. And if you're an Afghan soldier, police officer, who's going to want to give their life for a commander that's, you know, stealing you blind? I mean, nobody wants to do that. And so, yes, there were casualties, but that's a sign of just how poor of an army this was. Yeah. There's a lot now of conservative, Trumpy, social media, videos that, you know, there's this video that Don Jr., I don't know if you know about this, because you may not live on the internet the way Jesse and I do, but Don Jr., very excited about this video of American helicopter hanging a person said that it was the Taliban hanging a interpreter from an American helicopter because America did so. a bad job with the pullout. Of course, that video was not that. Shockingly, Don Jr. is spreading disinformation. It was actually somebody fixing a sign and it was not a hanging. And we saw, again, we've seen a lot of that, right? There's been a lot, like a flood of disinformation.

How can mainstream media outlets debunk this? Who is sort of working to destabilize the region now? Because obviously, besides, I mean, where do you think, like, is it China, is it Russia? Who wants to get in there? Well, there's a lot of questions in there. You know, when you look at it from a strategy perspective, at this point, you know, China and Russia, they don't want to destabilize Afghanistan. You know, it's on their borders. They want to stable Afghanistan. Now, they're probably going to try and have relations with the Taliban because they're like, well, the Taliban won.

Right. No, these guys aren't human rights champions, but we'd rather have a stable Afghanistan than have a war bubbling on our border forever. Now, Pakistan has a much different role historically. They did play a destabilizing role while we were fighting the war because they were supporting the Taliban, you know, covertly. But they want a more friendly government in Kabul because they see it as insurance and their constant hostilities with India in the other part of the region. So, I mean, there's, and you have Iran, you have, you know, you have all these foreign powers in that region. And Afghanistan has been this conflict that's been sizzling for half a century almost. What's going to happen? I don't know. I mean, the Taliban's in charge out.

Can they maintain their grip on power? We'll see. And what's the international community going to do in terms of aid or recognizing them? You know, I don't know. That's all going to be fascinating to watch. But it's not like Afghanistan's going to be solved anytime soon. This is going to be a real problem for a long time. We all know that Afghanistan is a place where many empires have met their ends.

Well, I don't know about met their end, but they certainly didn't fare very well in Afghanistan. And, I mean, you look at it from the Taliban's perspective. They kicked out the Russians. Oh, they kicked out the Americans. And the British. And the British. Well, their ancestors kicked out the British. Several times.

They're feeling pretty good about themselves. Yeah, it's such an interesting story. I hope you'll come back soon. Thank you, Craig. Thanks for having me. Great talking to you. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz?

The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday, host Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right.

Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Jen Jordan represents District 6 in the Georgia State Senate and is running for Attorney General there.

Welcome to the new abnormal, Jen Jordan. Yeah, thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I was listening to your floor speech about reproductive rights, your 2019 speech just before you came on, and I could not help but start crying. Yeah, I mean, but I think, you know, the whole point of giving the speech was to try to talk about reproductive rights and access to abortion in a way that's true. Because, you know, the way a lot of the activists liked to frame it in terms of on the pro-life side, it really is about women and autonomy, control of their bodies and their health. And we don't talk about it like that.

Yeah, you know, I have a similar experience to yours. I mean, not exactly, but it turned out my husband and I carried a genetic disease. And we were faced with the possibility of having a second trimester abortion. And there was no one who could give it. Even in New York, you know, we could have found someone, but it was like it was a whole other, you know, there's a lot. There's even regulation in very blue states. Well, the situation that you and your husband were dealing with, you're going to talk about kind of just awful, you know, like dealing with the emotional stress of all of that, trying to find appropriate care, wanting to talk to a health care provider, you know, that can provide you that care. It's just a lot.

We put all of this on women and we should be supporting them so that they can have healthy families if they choose to do that. And we should also be supporting health care providers and we're doing the exact opposite. Talk to me about where you've come from and what you're running for. Yeah. So I'm originally from Dodge County and Georgia with it, which is South Georgia. But I currently represent large parts of Bolton County and Cobb County, which is really, when you talk about suburban Atlanta, those women are. are my people. And we, I flipped a seat in 17th from, from red to blue and then have one re-election. And we've kind of grown, you know, democratic support every, every year. And, you know,

got to the point where everything that I cared about in terms of the law, the rule of law, you know, fighting for constitutional laws to be protected, you know, I was kind of stymie as a, as a state senator. But the one role where I really could have an impact, would be as Attorney General for the state of Georgia, as the chief legal officer, if you will. And so that's when I decided to run. I feel like your state is really a battleground state in a way I never have seen in my lifetime. Absolutely. I mean, folks said that Georgia was a blue state after, you know, the runoffs with Senators,

Ossoff, and Warnock. But it's not. But it's also not a red state. And we are transitioning so rapidly that it's, it's, even hard to determine, like, what is the electorate even going to look like next year? And so even trying to come up with any kind of political strategy or, you know, say, okay, well, these are the odds. I don't think anybody can really tell you one way or the other. But what I can say is that the state is definitely in play. And if we have people who, you know, love the state, love the people in

the state and want to do good by them, I think that Democrats, you know, I think Democrats can win. I want to talk to you about how do you appeal to people who are maybe functionally Republicans, but who have seen this Republican Party lose its damn mind? Look, I think you got to go to where the voters are. I think you have to talk to them. I think part of the issue that what things have gotten so bad, really, is that we don't even talk to each other anymore and actually try to figure out where the other person is coming from. I mean, look, I think that for me, you know, I represent Atlanta, but I'm actually from, you know, rural Georgia.

And so I really can kind of understand where folks are coming from and really do want to sit down and talk to them. They may not vote for me, but at least they'll have a little bit more of an understanding of who I am and, you know, what I want to do for them. And that really, it's everything I do or everything I'm fighting for. it's because I think that it's in the best interest of the people of this state. So, you know, I think we've just got to kind of get out of our bubbles. I think we've got to start talking to people. And I think we have to start being honest about what we believe and, you know, what our values are. And, you know, I think that a lot of folks in rural Georgia will be surprised how much they align with a lot of what Democrats believe and want.

Yeah, you know, the most famous politician out of Georgia. now is Marjorie Taylor Green, right? And I've written a lot about that. And, you know, she won that state, she won that district because she moved there was, there were normal candidates who were splitting the vote. I think that a lot of the craziness in the Republican Party doesn't accurately reflect what the people want. No. And I mean, part of the issue is, you know, gerrymandering in the state has, has contributed to kind of this radicalization of the basis. Because for state, House or state Senate races or even congressional races like Marjorie Taylor Greens, it is so far left or far right that you don't even have competitive general elections. It's all about the primaries. And so the only thing that Republicans really care about is either A, avoiding a primary altogether or making it through. And in order to do that, I mean, you really have to, you have to kind of bring the crazy a lot of times. And it's just toxic. I mean, we've seen it with green. We've seen it with other Republicans in the state. And, you know, I've talked to people behind closed doors, Republicans,

who are elected officials who say, you know what, I know that whatever we just passed or whatever we're pushing isn't really good policy. But for me, it's good politics. You know, if that's kind of how we're operating in this state, then something is really wrong. Right. So talk to me about Georgia, one of the other things that really happened in Georgia is the question of how Trump tried to pressure your Secretary of State into overturning the election. How has he survived? What is the landscape? Well, in terms of specifically with the Attorney General, look, as the chief legal officer, one of the things you have to make sure is that, you know, every county, every state agency, every state actor is following the law. And that includes following the Constitution

and protecting the rights, the constitutional voting rights of every citizen in this state. And so I think it's going to be even more important as we move forward because, look, we're going to have redistricting here in a month or two. And Republicans are going to be able to basically solidify their majorities because of gerrymandering. And so at that point, we know that under the Gold Dome, you know, Democrats aren't really going to have a say or a voice. So that's what makes the statewide offices so important. And particularly with respect to making sure that the rule of law is followed, the attorney

general, you know, it's going to be such an important role because that's the one person who can actually stand up and call elected officials out when they are trying to violate the rights of people here. You could prevent Republicans from stealing Georgia in the 2024 election. Absolutely. I mean, because they have this fantasy of overturning the election results. And we've seen even in this state, you know, Texas had, you know, Texas had all these insane laws passed yesterday and making it harder to vote.

And so I see that it's all. almost like Democrats are the only people defending democracy. Well, it's kind of weird because it's like Republicans, at least here in Georgia, nobody's even pretending anymore that this is about good election governance or supporting our institutions or democracy. I mean, it really is. They're just out and out saying, look, this is about winning at the end of the day. The gerrymandering and drawing the lines, that's about winning.

That's partisanship. All of these voting bills. yeah, that's about winning. So it's one of those things where I don't know when we kind of cross the Rubicon, where that became okay to say, yeah, you know, we know this is wrong and we know this may hurt certain people, but we just don't care. But we're there. And so the only thing that Democrats can really do is fight like hell.

I mean, fighting the courts, elect good people statewide, and hold people speak to the fire when they're trying to break the law and they're trying to violate people's rights. I think that's right. And I think that it is, it's just a really scary situation. What does the Georgia landscape look like now? So after the census figures, I mean, I think the thing that struck me the most was just how diverse Georgia is now and how quickly that's kind of happened. And not just the white, black diversity that a lot of folks will talk about. It's like, I mean, at all levels.

I mean, in terms of the AAPI community, in terms of Latin X, it's just incredible the growth in the last 10 years. And so I think it's one of those things where if you take that growth, you also take the fact that Democrats have been able to win. I mean, look, I cannot underscore how significant it was for us to win those Senate seats, apart from the fact that the U.S. senators are doing good work, but just for kind of the mental state of Democrats down here, because for so long we've been. said, we're going to win, we're going to win, we could never win, and we never kind of got it over. And so now that we have, I mean, I think the power of possibility is definitely there. And so we know we can do it. We know it takes a lot of money and a lot of work. But if we have the right people running, delivering the right message, and we all get out

the vote and really try to explain to people as much as possible, what's at stake, I mean, I definitely think it's doable. Talk to me about what's happening with abortion in your state. So the six-week abortion ban here has been held up in court. And in fact, I think we're going to have, I think they're supposed to be before the 11th Circuit in about three weeks for argument. But so it never went into effect, right? And so it's been enjoying the whole time. The district court, the trial court held that it was unconstitutional, which absolutely is. And it's kind of making its way through the court system.

So the old law is in place, which was already a very restrictive law, so a 20-week abortion ban. And so it's still considered one of the most restrictive laws in the country, even if the six-week ban never goes into effect. But the worry right now is that this argument over the six-week ban of this appeal isn't really even going to matter because, you know, I could see Republicans here in Georgia, basically just, you know, printing out the Texas law, you know, striking out, you know, Texas and filing it and saying, all right, let's go Georgia, because basically the Supreme Court has said that they can do that. And that would effectively ban all abortions in the state. Yeah. It is just completely crazy. And it's funny because what I loved about your speech, I just want to get back to this for one second, and then we're going to close, is that you talked about the idea that these people who have really no, you know, there's, there's, there's no science behind this. The fetal heartbeat thing is, it's not, it's bullshit. It comes from a very right-wing group in Ohio that just decided this was this arbitrary that if there was something that even looked like a heartbeat, they could call it a heartbeat. It's not a heart. And, and I just, I so appreciated you.

using your own experience because, you know, for a lot of us, it's not that we don't want to have babies. It's that, you know, birth defects happen. You know, you have a baby. I mean, I know people who had babies that were going to die. And, I mean, it's just, there's so much that these people don't understand. And then also, we have to protect these women who, who can't speak up. You know, having children or even making the decision to have children, I mean, this is the life experience of women is who we are, is what we deal with every day. And, you know, to have people kind of come into this space and dictate and really try to control our lives, you know, it's just, it's devastating on a lot of levels. I mean, these types of bands, I mean, they go so far beyond,

you know, even kind of the normal abortion debate to the point where it's going to impact, think about it from the physician perspective. I mean, can you even have a residency program for OBGYNs in a state that bans abortion? Because part of what you learn, you know, as a resident, is how to perform, you know, certain procedures. I mean, if you're a doctor, are you going to want to come to a state that says you can't provide appropriate care within the standard of care to your patients? There are so many implications above and beyond just kind of the normal things we talk about, that, you know, it's really scary. And at a time when health care providers are putting everything on the line for us, right? And then this is just another slap in the

face. And so, you know, it's, it's really scary. It really is they don't realize that there's no woman that wants to, you know, you don't have an abortion because things are going great. No. I mean, no. That's just it. It's like a, a, Total lack of trust in women. Yeah. It's almost like we're good to have the children, but we can't have any autonomy over our own bodies or anything else. We can't make any decisions beyond that. You know, it's really sad.

It impacts so many women, but really the impact is going to fall on, you know, like my daughter. She's 12. I mean, it's the younger women that, you know, are really going to be affected by a lot of these laws that are getting passed right now. Oh, such heartbreak. Thank you so much for joining us and good luck in your race. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Jesse Cannon. Molly Jong Fast. What's going on? Here we are. We did survive the flooding. We survived the flooding, but unfortunately the city of New Orleans is still in trouble. But one of the representatives from the great state of Louisiana, I really mean that. I love New Orleans.

It's my second favorite city in America. So this does hurt me a lot. He's not so concerned with. this is, SIDS. This is one Clay Higgins. Now, my, I'm going to come in a little hot here, because I know this is sacrilege. To infer anyone can give your man Louis Gomer a run for the money of stupidest congressman, but Clay really shows up and does his best, but I would argue that Clay is so dumb, he sometimes has trouble forming words so we don't always hear him say, you know, the things like casting aspersions on asparagus and all that fun stuff Louis does.

But Clay is mad about the Afghanistan helicopters left behind because he says that his constituents could use those. And he was more concerned with that than the damage of the hurricane that has cell phone and electricity down. Someone's getting high on his own conservative media. They get so mad about the made-up articles in Breitbart. So mad. It really is amazing how there's so many problems in this world today. And yet they will find ones that are totally don't exist. and just go on and on and on about them.

That's right, baby. Well, you know, then again, you were telling me his whole background is made up as he was a cop that had to turn. Dirty cop. Twice. Turn in his badge twice. Twice. He's like, oh, I'm a hero cop. He's not a hero.

Let me tell you. Well, Clay, I say fuck you for not putting your constituents first and always trying to score political points. Molly, who is your asshole of the day? I will say in Clay's defense. He is really fucking dumb. Yes. I love that we could defend our elected officials with that they're really dumb. I mean, he's not as dumb as Louis Gomert, but he's really dumb.

I won't concede. My fuck that guy and woman is the three Trumpy justices. Perhaps you've heard of them. But Gorsuch, who was supposed to not be a total fascist, though he turned out to be. Everyone's favorite Amy Coney under his eye Barrett and the illustrious Justice Kegstand-Cavanaugh. Those three fuckers basically overturned Roe in the middle of the night on a Wednesday because they don't fucking care. And for that, look, we know that Clarence Thomas is a complete psycho. No one had any illusions that he was going to do everything insane he could.

I watched those Anita Hill hearings. I know who he is. For as long as you and I have known news, we've known Clarence Thomas to do his worst. Right. And we've known Alito is also just, we'll do anything to get his hands in women's uteruses. But I was, I have to say, I was, you know, Roberts saw how insane this law was. And he said no dice. And Roberts, of course, is Republican.

And I thought that Neil Gorsuch, who, you know, would do better. But obviously, all of the Trumpy justices are the same. And they deserve the same ire. And so for that, I say, fuck you three. You, you know, the federalist put you there. And you are really, you know, they have made themselves a mockery in just a year. They had a chance to defend the law and they didn't take it. And so for that I say, fuck all of you.

You three are my fuck that guy. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh,

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